


love is not love which alters when it alteration finds

by redbrunja



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Smut, soul marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 09:06:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4429487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbrunja/pseuds/redbrunja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Later, he thought, Of course it would be her. Miss Fisher, with her lust for life (and the opposite sex) and driving fast and murders. Jack was half-convinced that she could make the world burst into color for anyone.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	love is not love which alters when it alteration finds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [backtothesea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/backtothesea/gifts).



Jack married Rosie because he loved her. She was intelligent and kind. They fit well together. He didn’t see the purpose in waiting for the person who would make the world bloom into color - in truth, didn’t believe she existed at all. Not everyone had a soulmate and Jack wasn’t the sort of person to long for an ideal. He and Rosie would be quite happy together. And they were, until the War. Until Jack returned home to find that every sense was dulled. Food tasted like mud and rusted tin, all music was jarring noise, the smell of the trenches wouldn’t leave his nostrils.

 

Jack threw himself into his work, into the satisfaction (his only satisfaction) of seeing murderers brought to justice and a fraction of order restored to the chaotic melee of the world.

 

Their separation was civilized.

 

Cold-blooded, you might even say.

 

He refused to fight with her, about anything, and Rosie didn’t have the stubbornness to maintain her anger in the face of his non-reaction, her hurt and vexation breaking against his apathy like the sea against the shore.

 

The one barb she threw at him, the one dig that drew blood, was at the end, when he was packing his suitcase.

 

“I suppose it’s for the best,” she’d said, “You’re not my soulmate, after all. Maybe I have a chance of finding him, now.”

 

And Jack, who had meant his wedding oaths to the marrow of his bones, had sucked in a quick breath.

 

Then came The Honorable Phryne Fisher.

 

_This is the scene of a crime._

 

_Well, lucky for you, I'm wearing gloves._

 

Her red, red mouth, the dramatic dark line of her hair.

 

Later, he thought, _Of course it would be her._ Miss Fisher, with her lust for life (and the opposite sex) and driving fast and murders. Jack was half-convinced that she could make the world burst into color for _anyone_.

 

“You have to understand,” the murderer said, leaning across the table. “She was my _soul-mate_. And she thought she could leave me? _That_ should’ve been against the law. She’s the criminal here, not me.”

 

He leaned against the table, his eyes flicking from Jack to Miss Fisher and back again, looking for sympathy.

 

Jack had not a scrap of it. He was sitting across from a man who’d held down his soulmate, squeezing her neck while she clawed at his shoulders, until the color drained from his world.  Jack had spent his entire adult career seeing the violence that people inflicted on each other, had spent long months freezing and starving and killing for King and Country; and there was still a small part of him that found the murder of a soulmate nigh-unthinkable.

 

“Do you think she was truly going to leave him?” Miss Fisher asked later, in her sumptuous parlor. There was an odd note in her voice, almost brittle.

 

Jack lifted his head from where he’d been tilting his glass back and forth, watching the rich amber liquid shift and catch the light, the deep color more distracting than the alcoholic content.

 

“I should hope so,” he said.

 

“Even though they were soulmates?” Miss Fisher was curled on the divan, feet tucked coyly under her.

 

“Miss Fisher,” he answered, low and serious, well aware of the question Phryne was truly asking him. “Any man who would ask a woman to be less than she is - for any reason - doesn’t deserve her.”

 

Watching Phryne’s head tilt at this was the first moment that Jack had been sure, beyond any doubt, that he was Phryne’s soulmate. (He’d wondered, as they danced around each other and she entertained a rotating cast of younger men, if this connection had been one-sided. If she brought the world into aching, glorious, brilliant color for him, and he didn’t do the same for her.) It gave him to the bravado to add, “I will never ask you to be less.”

 

Phyne’s red, red lips parted, she put a hand on the arm of the divan, preparing herself to rise, and then Mr. Butler entered.

 

“I apologize for the intrusion,” he said politely. “But there is a rather distressed and blood-spattered young woman at the back door which I believe requires your immediate attention, Miss Fisher.”

 

“Oh, well, that sounds intriguing,” Miss Fisher commented. She tossed back the last of her drink. “Shall we?”

 

They shall.

 

And then another evening, another successfully closed case, and when their drinks are finished, Jack left his coat and hat and followed Phryne up the stairs to her bedroom, his hand resting low on the small of her back.

 

Phryne undressed him with uncharacteristic seriousness. A small frown of concentration as she undid his tie, unbuttoned his cuffs, his vest. Her expression couldn’t be at the task itself; he has no doubt that Miss Fisher was as adroit at removing a man’s clothes at she was at putting on her own.

 

On that subject…

 

He took her hand, lead her into a turn. Phryne added a little shimmy as she moved, sending the jet beads decorating her deep turquoise frock dancing.

 

His fingers found her delicate zipper, carefully eased the fastening down.

 

Her dress slithered off her body, pooling at her feet.

 

He slid his hands down her sides, over the the silk of her underthings. It was a flashing impulse, something he hadn’t considered before, one he followed. He knelt down, tugged up the bottom hem of her chemise, baring the cream curve of her rear. He bit, gently, and Phryne shrieked with laughter, and oh, this was exactly how he’d imagined this, so many times, Phryne laughing and tugging him into her bed.

 

They tumbled onto her sheets, the last of their attire removed. Jack drew her to him, his hands cupping her shoulder blades, her warm, soft skin pressed against his. She grinned at him, perfect white teeth and impossibly crimson mouth.

  
Jack kissed her. Her lips were soft, beneath the chalk-slick coating of lipstick, the color undoubtedly bleeding off onto his own mouth.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday! BTW, I spent almost as much time googling 1920’s underwear as I did writing this fic. For one line. #artistic process


End file.
